The company’s most durable idea is also its smallest: reach the disease through a vessel, an opening or a pinprick - then turn that procedure into a platform.
Shreya Mehta is the President and CEO of Zenflow, a South San Francisco medical device company she co-founded in 2014 out of the Stanford Biodesign Innovation Fellowship. A biomedical engineer and former FDA reviewer, she spent a decade building the Zenflow Spring System, a minimally invasive, reversible implant that props open the urethra to relieve symptoms of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). She started as CTO before stepping into the CEO seat, closed a $24M Series C in November 2024, and helped guide the company to FDA approval.
Ted Belleza is the founder, President and CEO of URO-1, Inc., a medical device company based in Greensboro, North Carolina that develops the SUREcore biopsy needle and coreCARE specimen-retrieval kit for prostate and soft tissue biopsy. A serial MedTech entrepreneur with more than 35 years of business experience and prior roles at Gynesonics (acquired by Hologic), Endosee (acquired by CooperSurgical) and LiveLeaf Bioscience, Belleza came out of retirement after his own prostate cancer experience to redesign what he calls an antiquated biopsy procedure, aiming to give physicians bigger, better and more consistent tissue samples.
URO-1, Inc. is a Greensboro, North Carolina medical device company modernizing the prostate biopsy, a procedure its founder describes as largely unchanged in decades. Founded in 2017 by prostate cancer survivor and serial MedTech entrepreneur Ted Belleza, URO-1 makes the FDA-cleared SUREcore biopsy needle and coreCARE tissue transfer system, a paired platform built to collect larger, more intact tissue cores and preserve their integrity on the way to pathology. The company reports its needle hit 92% targeting accuracy in MRI-ultrasound fusion biopsies versus 36% for conventional needles, and began commercial launch in January 2025 following an $8 million Series A.
Zenflow is a South San Francisco medical device company that built the Spring, a small nitinol coil implanted through a flexible cystoscope to prop open the urethra and relieve the symptoms of an enlarged prostate (benign prostatic hyperplasia). Spun out of Stanford's Biodesign program in 2014, the company won FDA approval in December 2025 for a first-line interventional therapy that requires no catheter afterward, preserves sexual function, and can be reversed. It has raised roughly $85 million across multiple rounds and ran the multinational BREEZE pivotal trial to get there.
Aurie is a Syracuse-based medical device company that built the first FDA-authorized reusable no-touch intermittent catheter system. Founded by industrial designer Souvik Paul after his sister-in-law's catheter-related infections, Aurie reuses a single catheter up to 100 times via a portable Personal Disinfector that cleans, disinfects, and lubricates the device in 36 minutes - cutting waste and recurring costs for people living with neurogenic bladder.
Promaxo builds the world's first single-sided, in-office MRI platform - a compact magnet, AI, and robotics stack that lets urologists run image-guided prostate biopsies and focal treatments in their own clinic, without a hospital scanner suite.
Dr. Prithipal S. Sethi is a board-certified urologist, founder and CEO of Golden State Urology, and Chief Medical Officer at Promaxo - the company pioneering in-office MRI technology for prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment. With over 25 years of clinical practice, 2,500+ enlarged prostate procedures performed, and a career rooted in bringing advanced imaging technology directly into the urologist's office, Sethi straddles the worlds of clinical medicine and medical device innovation. Trained at UC Berkeley, St. Louis University, and Medical College of Wisconsin, he built Golden State Urology from a single Stockton practice in 2004 into a multi-location Northern California institution, and now serves as a clinical voice for a technology that is reshaping how prostate cancer is caught and treated.